Cythbot, pneumatic Guitar Hero

Here’s yet another robot hoping to dominate the human race through the power of ROCK. Cythbot was built to demonstrate Cyth Systems machine vision systems. The device uses a camera to watch the Guitar Hero monitor and identify notes for button presses. The strum bar is then triggered after a delay. The notes are identified solely by pixel intensity since star power can cause them to change shape and color. All button presses are done using pneumatics. The whole system is self-contained and doesn’t require a separate computer for processing. Our favorite part is that the controller remains completely unmodified and the industrial light tree used to indicate notes. The team says that the pneumatics aren’t quite fast enough to hit 100%, unlike some humans. Video of the bot in action after the break.

At this year’s “Vision 2008″ fair (in Germany) I was presenting the robocup system of our university in the same booth as the cythbot so I had the chance to watch the system live. It was a really cool hack, but after three days of standing next to it, I had problems getting “Cliffs of Dover” out of my head ;-)

If it predicted when the key needed to be depressed, it could probably be fast enough by starting the pneumatic actuator early (unless it’s the strum bar that’s slow). The click just needs to be registered after the strum. If it is the strum bar that is slow, most of the fast sections are hammer-on/pull-off which do not require strumming. Taking advantage of that would probably require a better “note” identification scheme.

That, and have the actuator on the strum-bar strum both up and down.
The more difficult songs you pretty much have to strum both ways to do well (especially during the solos)
See GH:WT “Impossible” song